High status

The problem with not only being the daughter of some famous rocker, is not that you get great things or cameras on you. It's that you don't get the privacy needed when someone so dear to you dies. The flowers, candy, and everything else that comes with money can wait. Yet, when you are in these shoes, you not only carry the weight of your own body but the expectations of everyone else.

I know the burden well, it's been mine since I was born and sometimes I wonder why I had to fit into these shoes. I wonder what it would of been like to grow up in a happy middle class family, or even a rich family with no fame to them. I wonder, and yet I can't answer those questions nor can any of my friends that are as high status as I am now.

My father was the lead singer of a band named Krowe, a rather famous band that has been in rock for most of my life. I listen to my father's music sometimes, but I can't say that it's great to listen to songs written about you. I know that they're songs of endearment, but can you honestly feel privacy when fans know about some of your childhood?

I used to think, that I could escape this sort of life after my mother had divorced my dad when I was in elementary. I was wrong, because even though we weren't apart his family anymore...we had been assosicated with him. My mother ended up moving half way across the country, to a town out in no where to get away from it all.

I had followed suit with her, but our solitude was shattered when my boyfriend, best friend and first love crashed his car with me in it. My name ran over papers and then there came the camera's, the very things I had been hiding from most of my life. I had normalicy for a short while and here I was cringing in my room as I got ready for the funeral surely to come today.

I had make up to cover up the bruises on my face, because I had hit my head against the dash. I was the lucky one though, if I had not been wearing a seatbelt...I would of been ejected from the car and onto the hard ground. I remember the ride up to the crash, but after that is a blurr.

I couldn't cry, for some reason and I thought it was the shock from all the things that happened at once. First, it was the crash, then waiting for news of Jacob and then everything just seemed to follow with. His announcement of death, his relationship to me, the papers printing out my history and then the camera's came. The people that had been wondering what had happened to Victor's daughter and ex-wife.

It really shouldn't of mattered, my father had re-married 5 years after we had left and had 3 children to worry about. What was I to him anways? I was just a card every now and again, maybe a phone call, possibly money for me to get exactly what I wanted. He bought me a car, and he bought me nice clothes. Yet, we were strangers and now I was being hussled around in his world.

I didn't want this, nor did my mother whom had cracked under the pressure of cameras. I had not been brought up in front of one, and it had made it easier for me to form relationships with the towns people. In fact we didn't really tell them our last names, we had changed it legally just so we didn't have to flasify records.

I could hear the crowd that was outside of my house, and I wanted to make them all go away. I stared at myself, and thought that I couldn't be as much of a wreck as I was then. My door flew open stopping my thoughts.

"Kotie, it's time to go..."

I looked up at my mother, she looked more normal than I did. Her face was blotched with red marks. I could even tell that she had been crying, and I wasn't even human enough to shed a tear. I smiled slightly.

"I'll be there..."

She seemed to hesitate at the door, not wanting to leave me alone. I could see in her eyes, that it seemed like I was insane to even smile. I guess I had scared her, because I had been in love with Jacob. I just was too shocked to feel all of it at once.

"Mom?"

She broke out of her thoughts to listen.

"I'm not going to kill myself, I promise."

She nodded almost zombie like and turned leaving me once again to my short lived isolation. I watched as people pressed close to the house. I pondered why they'd even bother.

"Kotie, we've got to go.."

I heard my mother call from down the hall, I felt one emotion in my frozen heart a sense of fear. I couldn't breath realizing that I had hidden the fact that crowds terrified me. Probably because when I had been very small, I had almost been crushed. I had been t rying to get to my dad, but had been pushed aside.

In that moment, I also believed that I had grown resentment for my father. Since, in that mess he hand't seemed to care. My mother had found me luckily and had been so scared that I had been squished. When my mother had told my father, he had merely exlaimed,

"she's alright now, Be. She's a tough girl."

He then had ruffled my hair and went back to dicussing tour problems. In my mind it was the first moment my mom had made a choice to end the marriage. Yet, it wasn't until a year later before she put her thoughts into action.

"Kotie?"

I shook my head falling back out of the memory and into the reality that was now. I winced when I realized that it was a mistake to even move my head too quickly. My neck was still really sore from the impact that I had taken. My mom took a hold of my wrist gently pulling me out of my room, and down to the front door. She stopped when we were about to go through it. She turned looking at me with her big beautiful blue eyes.

"we don't have to go, you know?"

There was concern etched on her face, but also something more. I felt like a whip had struck my heart. I had to say goodbye to Jacob public or not, my brain screamed.

"I can't stay here."

My voice cracked, realizing that the ice around my heart might be melting. She squeezed my wrist lightly, knowing that for the most part I was still very much in pain. She nodded and I reached for the door.

The roar of the crowd around the house pressed on me. There were flashes all over the place, blinding me as I tried to walk to the car. People pressed closer, asking me questions that I couldn't ignore.

"Ms. Landings, how are you feeling?"

"What do you have to say about your father?"

"Is there anything you'd like to add about living a lie?"

My mom, supported my arm as I waved a hand in front of me. The flashes kept going even as I mouthed 'no.' The reporters all seemed to be dying for answers. I stopped dead in my tracks before the car and felt a bang of sadness.

I wanted them to leave me alone and respect my privacy, but that isn't something any of them were willing to do. I turned to face them, listening as a hush fell over the crowd; all there was was clicks from their camera's.

I took a deep breath and prayed that this wouldn't get me anymore attention than I already had.

"You come here asking how 'I'm feeling' and I can honestly say I feel horrible and crushed. My feelings would reflect whatever you want to put in that paper to make your readers happy. I don't feel very well, and it's a stupid question to ask me. I don't have anything to say to or about my father. I was and am not living a lie. You have no idea how much I wish Jacob had never died and that my name hadn't shown in the newspapers."

I stopped there, feeling as the tears in my eyes would overwhelm me, I turned getting into the car. The reporters seemed to of gotten over their shock as I shut the door. They were pressing against the windows asking for more information.

I looked down at my feet, and felt the car jolt forward. We were moving toward were I need to go. At least that is what I thought.

When I did look up, there was a man that I had never seen before staring at me. I looked around realizing my mom had not gotten in the car, and that there wasn't a car behind us following. We didn't turn into the cemetry, we just kept going. Fear clashed down on me, and I wanted to disappear.

The connection seemed to click all at once, and the man had already closed the space between us. He moved too quickly to be human, and I didn't know what to think. I was about to scream, and bolt across the car when his arms wrapped around me. He pressed a cloth over my nose and mouth.

The smell entered my system, and it made me gag. I tried to push it away from me, but he was too strong. I struggled and struggled, but anything I did seemed like nothing to him. He merely held me onto me, I stared up into his ice blue eyes pleadingly. All I saw was sadness staring back at me, as my world blurred in color, my limbs seemed to stop responding and I spiraled into oblivion.